To C.K. Stead (1957) Poem by Rob Dyer

Reply to C.K. Stead, Letter to R.R. Dyer

How can we desert the day
who storm through the mists of morning?
Shall not some untold age proclaim us
the gods who did bestride the untamed hills
and crown a common place in verse?

Over severed seas ten tired men
pray for rest on the sinking tide;
with our leopard skins in the high-breasted nook
on the cliffside, proud as gannets,
let us stand and watch the old men dream,
and laugh to watch them try to clasp
their dull retreating wave,

but for a minute only who bear calloused hands
to the hills whose third seed only we are,
tribute to man and tribute to God,
fruition in a woman's arms,
but love for the land whose deep sons we are.
Hearing this high man stammer and this low man hold his peace,
I do proclaim our native mystery more true
than any present Briton's truth.

Come seek no crowns of holly longer
nor dark, pulsating laurel bough.
We have no need to turn for higher gold
than the seven fronds of the punga
to which our hearts are told.

I have done wrong to my sole self.
Desert not so the long stretch of the beaches
and the quiet eastern waves.
But my voice shall return in the roll of thunder
with the notes of the ages strummed on a tuning fork
and the sound of water beneath the dark Minoan prows.

You say I live betraying, Karl;
mark only what my dead voice brings you from the past.